National Workshop on Future Sensing Systems to be held August 26-28, 2002

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

A National Workshop on Future Sensing Systems Summary and Objectives Recent technological advancements in material science, micro fabrication of MEMS, and bioengineered systems, have made the dream of inexpensive, powerful, ubiquitous sensing a readily achievable reality. With ubiquitous sensing comes extreme amounts of data, when the end user actually wants information (decisions and answers). Integration of distributed computing and extremely dispersed networking with new sensor technologies and wireless communications innovations, has the potential to overcome barriers of time, scale, materials and environment. Sensor informatics has not been seen as fundamental to the sensor community to date, although all experts polled for this document agreed it is central to real-time usability. We propose a National Workshop on future Sensing Systems - a vehicle to start researchers on the road to integrating the possibilities being developed by the many interests working in the common space. The workshop will focus on exposing future abilities of various disciplines working on new sensor science to other researchers possibly doing similar or complimentary work in their local space. Integration of industrial research and application development will provide that pull and an avenue to large-scale, inexpensive production. An example is the current availability of rugged, highly accurate, MEMS accelerometers due to their application as automotive air-bag triggers. It is hoped, for instance, that the medical researchers will become aware of advanced imaging technologies developed by DARPA to image non-metallic structural pieces, and can become an improvement on existing bio-imaging techniques. We hope to push the community to (1) move from merely providing data to providing information and answers; (2) build road maps for long-term research; (3) build broad partnerships; and (4) address educational needs. These opportunities and problems are common to many agencies of Government, as well as industry and academia, and is to be sponsored by Sensors Technology, NSF Division of Civil and Mechanical Systems, with co-sponsorship from Dynamic Systems and Control (CMS), DARPA, NIH, DOE, NIST, NASA, AFOSR, ONR, ARO, ARL, and NRL. We are expecting over 100 attendees, with 70 of them university researchers for whom all expenses will be covered by this proposal. The hard deliverable to NSF will be a workshop report which will serve as the leading edge for future of sensor-oriented research at the Civil and Mechanical Systems Division, NSF. The report will be written by the co-PIs (Glaser and Pister) with extensive guidance and input from the steering committee and participants. The report will be presented to NSF by 15 January, 2003.